soldier." While United States Secret Service counterfeiting experts could find no reason to believe it was a fake, military investigators concluded from the "handwriting and choice of words" that the message had not been written by a Japanese. The investigators also found it difficult to believe that a single soldier, with the arms at hand, could have inflicted casualties on such a scale; the largest officially accepted number of soldiers killed by a single American is 75 by Marine Douglas T. Jacobson on Iwo Jima on February 26, 1945. In December 1989, the Army announced it would not recommend that the award be made because there was "insufficient evidence to substantiate either that the event reported by Mr. Rubitsky occurred or that the Medal of Honor was recommended on his behalf within the stipulated period." Lieutenant Colonel Terence Adkins, head of the military awards branch, reported that American and Japanese records "all agree that the Japanese were in defense and that no major attack took place. Japanese records showed, he said, that fewer than 500 soldiers were effective at the time because their ranks had been depleted by malaria and dysentery." Most of Rubitsky's supporters accepted the decision. However, Joseph Stehling responded by stating, "The Army can say what it wants, but let me say this: The stench of those decaying bodies that day in the jungle stayed with me for years." The government of Papua New Guinea commissioned an unnamed "noted historian", who concluded that Rubitsky was telling the truth. As a result, he was made an honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire. Death Rubitsky died on June 28, 2013, at the age of 96 in East Moline, Illinois. References 1917 births 2013 deaths 21st-century American Jews Jewish American military personnel United States Army personnel of World War II Honorary Members of the Order of the British Empire People from Milton, Wisconsin Place of birth missing United States Army soldiers United States Merchant Mariners